2023 Hunting Adventures Recap

[Desk Pop]

I had two Brittany litters at home that were growing up by June when I got back to the states. The bigger ones are a few from my Blixen/Rocky cross. The younger are some from my Lyla/Rocky cross. I repeated these crosses recently and am expecting soon.

 

[Desk Pop]

July - I had a desert bighorn ewe tag and spent a few days driving south and scouting. The tag was a wilderness area and the sheep would be on the tops on the opener.

It was lonely and sort of intimidating, but beautiful.

 

[Desk Pop]

Went for a family vacation to the Gulf of Mexico. I typically spend the mornings on the pier, but a hurricane had blown it away.

I rented a kayak. Morning one my brother-in-law and I went out about 800 yards and I got a nice king mackerel on a live pinfish. We really thought we had our hands full at the time...

Little did I know what was to come.

 

[Desk Pop]

While we were eating the king that night, I got a call from C. He had been sheep scouting with his dad.

Conclusion: sheep were around and in decent numbers, but we'd have to climb up to get them.

 

[Desk Pop]

I went out on the kayak again, and we got a sweet shark, among some other small fish.

 

[popeyoung12]

Well, burned 14 years of pts. For a ca. Mulie bowhunt. Spent 8 days, all day chasing 170 plus mulies in lion country, lava rock. Had 1 shot@74 yards with a crosswind. After 34 years drew a desert sheep tag@13,000 feet. Killed my ram, 1/6 to tag out. Great duck/quail hunting.as usual. Rolled into my whitetail farm, killed 3 doe in 90 minutes with a bow. Killed a badly wounded buck 2 days after my mom passed. Great season with lots of memories. She tagged her bow and gun buck for 40 years battling ms. Prayers to Mom.

 

[Desk Pop]

The third morning, my nephew who was going to be a senior in high school wanted to go on the kayak. Andrew is always up for an adventure and is the nephew who usually goes to the pier every single morning at 4:30am before the pier blew away.

 

[Desk Pop]

On the third morning on the kayak, my nephew and I had an adventure we will not soon forget. After some action on other fish, we found ourselves about 400 yards out, just past the second sandbar trying to relocate some Jack Crevalle that were hitting schools of bait fish. I spotted some migrating tarpon rolling through. We got ahead of the school and Andrew cast a live menhaden in front of them. A tarpon grabbed it and Andrew got a couple quick hook sets in before the fish went right under our boat and took his first jump about ten feet from our little rental kayak. Our butts were like four inches off of the water. The tarpon cleared three feet of air under his tail and was well over six feet long. It was intense.

He fought and jumped and fought some more. Then he went out to sea, and we couldn't do anything about it but try to stay afloat. I knew this was crazy, but sometimes you just have to live a little. We ended up so far out that our family couldn't see us from three stories up in our beach rental with the naked eye. They needed the 10x binos I'd brought for spotting fish.

Tarpon are big fish, and I knew he was solid, but it wasn't until about an hour and fifteen minutes into the fight, when he jumped really close to the boat and was broadside did I realize we had a truly giant tarpon on.

I kept the fish in front of the boat the best I could because when he was perpendicular to our kayak, it would tip bad.

It took two hours on the boat fighting it to eventually get the kayak to the beach (a mile and half down the beach from where we'd started) but the tarpon was still 100 yards out and not wanting anything to do with the shore. After three hours total of fighting, Andrew landed him.

I would have liked to have lifted him out of the water more for the photos, but we didn't want to hurt the fish. He was released and swam off nicely.

Andrew said he was glad he woke up at 5:30am, and that fishing from a kayak was way better than the pier.

20lb mono
60lb flourocarbon shock leader